Friday, March 31, 2017

A group of conservative leaders defended the House Freedom Caucus for sticking to its principles in the debate over the House health care bill on Friday.

“I urge the president to rethink these attacks on the Freedom Caucus,” said L. Brent Bozell III, a Republican advocacy leader, during a conference call filled with top conservatives defending the Freedom Caucus against President Donald Trump’s recent attacks directed toward the group.

A Connecticut student gets to share her vision of the future with the world, with a little help from Google.

Sarah Harrison, a 10th grader from Bunnell High School in Connecticut, won the annual Doodle 4 Google competition with her drawing showing peace and diversity among people from all walks of life. The theme for the ninth annual contest, in which Harrison squared off against hundreds of thousands of other entries, was "What I see for the future...".

QOTD: "I was urging my former colleagues and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill, it was more actually aimed at telling the Hill people, get as much information as you can, get as much intelligence as you can, before President Obama leaves the administration… Because I had a fear that somehow that information would disappear with the senior [Obama] people who left, so it would be hidden away in the bureaucracy … that the Trump folks – if they found out how we knew what we knew about their … the Trump staff dealing with Russians – that they would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we no longer have access to that intelligence… And that is why you have the leaking." --Former Obama Pentagon Offical Evelyn Farkas

I sat on this story for two days. You know, I’m slapping myself here. What’s her name — Evelyn Farkas, is that her name? Evelyn Farkas. She went on MSNBC. She was in the Obama administration. What this woman did was unwittingly out the entire Obama administration’s surveillance of the Trump transition team, Trump campaign. She went on TV and basically admitted it and explained how she was behind it, how she was involved in it.

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

“In 2015, Russian intelligence agencies penetrated the computers of political organizations, think tanks and other U.S. institutions in what looked like a foreign intelligence-gathering operation,” but “this is not the first time we were hacked by Russia.” This particular action was “so extraordinary” because “President Vladimir Putin decided to become an active participant in the U.S. election and attempt to influence its result for Donald Trump and against Hillary Clinton.” Further, “this is not idle speculation or the partisan characterization of ambiguous events – it is the consensus conclusion of all our intelligence agencies.”

Judicial Watch today released 1,184 pages of State Department records, including previously unreleased Hillary Clinton email exchanges, revealing additional instances of Abedin and Hillary Clinton sending classified information through unsecured email accounts and contributors being given special access to the former secretary of state.

QOTD: "Today’s energy independence action calls for an immediate reevaluation of the so-called Clean Power Plan. Perhaps no single regulation threatens our miners, energy workers, and companies more than this crushing attack on American industry. Second, we are lifting the ban on federal leasing for coal production. Third, we are lifting job-killing restrictions on the production of oil, natural gas, clean coal, and shale energy. And, finally, we are returning power to the states where that power belongs. States and local communities know what is best for them." --President Donald Trump

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

Democratic super-lobbyist Tony Podesta grossed more than $500,000 to represent a Chinese company criminally convicted in March of sending illegal shipments of telecom equipment to Iran, The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group has learned.

The seriousness of the illegal sales to Iran were so extreme and continued for so long — from 2010 to last year — the Department of Justice (DOJ) imposed a record $1.19 billion fine on the ZTE Telecommunications company, making it the largest penalty ever imposed in a U.S. sanctions case.

QOTD: "State and local governments with "sanctuary city" status will lose federal grants from the Justice Department, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Monday at the White House.

"Such policies cannot continue. They make our nation less safe by putting dangerous criminals back on the streets," Sessions said in the White House press briefing room. "Today, I am urging states and local jurisdictions to comply with these federal laws."

...More than 140 jurisdictions have been designated as sanctuaries, including 37 cities... [Los Angeles and other] big cities that refuse to cooperate with the federal government on immigration include New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle.

Maryland is considering legislation to make it a sanctuary state.

"That would be such a huge mistake," Sessions said. "I would plead with the people of Maryland to understand this makes the state of Maryland more at risk for violence and crime, that it's not good policy."" --Allen Cone

Monday, March 27, 2017

Carter Page is an oil industry executive who advised Donald Trump on energy matters during the presidential campaign. Page's name was raised as a subject of investigations into contacts with Russian energy officials by the Obama Executive Branch. Page was justifiably outraged and released the following letter to the Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee — Devin Nunes and Adam Schiff respectively.

QOTD: "I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer." --Benjamin Franklin, 1766

Sunday, March 26, 2017

During every election cycle, to maintain the illusion of representative government, Republicans tell voters exactly what they want to hear.

After the election, successful Republicans candidates either simply ignore their campaign promises or offer legislation that provides the appearance rather than the substance of fulfilling those promises, usually in a form constructed to reward their real constituents, the special interests.

Saturday, March 25, 2017

When President Donald Trump released his first
budget earlier this month proposing to cut a range of agencies and
programs, he declared, in an accompanying message “our budget
blueprint insists on $54 billion in reductions to non-defense
programs.” He said: “We are going to do more with less, and make
the government lean and accountable to the people.”

Many of Trump’s proposals will not be greeted warmly on Capitol
Hill. And, to be sure the $54 billion in non-defense cuts he put
forth are matched by $54 billion in defense spending increases. So
that focus on “lean” does not extend to the Pentagon, and there is
no overall spending reduction to help get rising deficits under
control.

What’s more, members of both parties defend subsidy programs
that aid their states. Still, the broad sweep of Trump’s proposals
gives him a strong starting position in budget negotiations. Since
he dishes out the pain widely, his cuts will be perceived as being
fair, as least by Republican voters.

On Saturday, Ziyed Ben Belgacem pays a visit to Orly Airport in Paris. He grabs a female soldier from behind and grapples for her rifle while holding a pellet gun to her head. He warns the other soldiers to drop their rifles and raise their hands.

He shouts, "I am here to die in the name of Allah ... There will be deaths."

He’s mostly right. It’s the plural part he gets wrong. The soldier goes low. Her friends shoot him dead. But he’s not entirely wrong either. There will be deaths. Even if they aren’t at Orly Airport.

Friday, March 24, 2017

According to the U.N.'s top human rights body, Israel is the worst human rights violator in the world today. That’s the result of the latest session of the UN Human Rights Council which wrapped up in Geneva on Friday by adopting five times more resolutions condemning Israel than any other country on earth.

President Trump’s administration is currently a member of this reprehensible body. To borrow Elie Wiesel’s counsel to President Reagan not to pay his respects at a German graveyard containing Nazi SS remains: “That place, Mr. President, is not your place.”

Mr. Ryan, you continue with your mantra, that the GOP is now a governing party not an opposition party. These are words that apply to you. You failed to develop a plan that embraced market capitalism and you did not involve the GOP conservatives in the early phases of drafting your plan. You tried to force this plan through, adopted a few changes, but mostly continued with big-government ideas and much of Obamacare's essential elements. The failure to govern is on the GOP leadership. And the failure to uphold the repeal promise with an actual repeal of most of Obamacare is also on the GOP leadership. These troubling circumstances could have been avoided.

Editor's note: I have no idea who Paul Ryan is actually working for, but I'm certain it's not the American people.

I think FreedomWorks has this absolutely right. The House GOP was happy to pass dozens of faux Obamacare repeal bills when they knew President Obama was poised to veto anything that hit his desk.

Now, when they have the actual power to force through pretty much anything they want (after all, the Democrats used every trick in the book to get Obamacare passed, including "budget reconciliation"), they fold like cheap accordians.

These weaklings, led by Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, got elected by promising the American people they would eviscerate Obamacare "root and branch".

QOTD: "It’s now clear what happened. The Obama people started spying on Trump once he had the nomination or perhaps even earlier. They may have started earlier with an eye on helping the Republicans knock him off in the primary, but that’s not clear. They figured that Clinton was a lock so they were not careful about covering their tracks. The Clinton people are as dirty as it gets so they were not going to be ratting on anyone over it. If anything, they would expand on it.

This is where the Russian hacking story comes into the picture. Once disaster struck and Team Obama realized they had a problem, they needed cover, so they started with the Russian hacking nonsense. They would then claim that it was all an accident and they were just trying to prevent Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale from attacking our democracy! It’s also why Obama signed a retroactive Executive Order giving cover to the intel agencies for their domestic spying activities. They were creating a cover story.

The complication is that it appears that at least one person has perjured himself over this and that one person is FBI Director Comey. There’s no way to square his testimony with these new revelations. The best he can do is split hairs and claim he was not part of the spying effort. Of course, there’s no way to touch him as he runs the FBI. In fact, there’s no way to investigate any of the intelligence organizations. This is the point where many of the robot historians of the future will say the American political class murdered itself." --The Z Man

Thursday, March 23, 2017

Yesterday, Republican Devin Nunez Nunes held an explosive press conference outside the White House in which he told reporters that communications from the Trump team were picked up and disseminated within the government during the 2016 campaign.

Not surprisingly, the comments ruffled some liberal feathers and the mainstream media launched an immediate smear campaign calling for Nunes to resign his post immediately.

Now, according to Fox News sources, Congressional investigators expect that a potential “smoking gun” from the NSA establishing that the Obama administration spied on the Trump transition team, and possibly the President-Elect himself, will be produced to the House Intelligence Committee as early as tomorrow.

QOTD: "Three intelligence sources told The Daily Beast that the ban on carry-on electronics aboard U.S.-bound flights from 10 airports in North Africa and the Middle East was the result of information seized during a U.S. raid on Al Qaeda in Yemen in January. The United Kingdom joined the U.S. ban Tuesday.

Information from the raid shows al Qaeda's successful development of compact, battery bombs that fit inside laptops or other devices believed to be strong enough to bring down an aircraft, the sources said. The battery bombs would need to be manually triggered, a source explained, which is why the electronics ban is only for the aircraft cabin not checked luggage." --Jana Winter and Clive Irving